On Jul 3, 2007, at 6:38 AM, Alan Gresley wrote: > > I will dare say that xml doctypes, mime types and parsing seem to > confuse people more than it does IE6.
Indeed :-) However, note that Internet Explorer (any version) doesn't understand correctly served xhtml, so we have to serve xhtml as 'text/html' for the time being -- if we want it to work. > http://www.gunlaug.no/contents/wd_1_06_03.html The above page is duplicated -- 6 versions -- so one can test across browser-land and see how each browser handles it with different MIME types and with flaws in the source code. > Remember that browsers usually show xhtml or html in standard mode > (or almost standard mode) with a URI or quirksmode without a URI. > There was a good page on Georg's site about why he likes to send > IE6 into quirksmode with the xml prolog, but I can not find it now. It's here... <http://www.gunlaug.no/contents/wd_additions_16.html> ... and I haven't found a good reason to change my mind on the subject. I find it easier and less "hacky" to get a reasonably good styling through to IE6 when it's in quirks mode, than having to deal with its "not very standard compliant mode" > http://www.gunlaug.no/ > > I still have a lot to learn myself since some pages on Georg's site > don't even have a mime type. Very confusing indeed. Shouldn't be all that confusing, really. It's according to standards, and I'll expand slightly on it here since it may affect how our CSS is working. All my pages are sent with a MIME type -- by the server. Browsers don't need the information in the meta element, since they get the information in the header sent by a properly set up server. The server usually takes its information from the 'html/xhtml/xml' extension, so the meta element isn't used by the server either. If a server doesn't serve up the correct/wanted MIME type, the that's dealt with in the set-up for that particular server. The meta element is only of some use when testing locally -- on our own computers, and for the W3C HTML validator. Since I use an 'xml declaration' on top, I don't even need the meta element for that. What one preferably should do when preparing to serve xhtml as 'text/ html' -- which is what most of us do all the time, is to start by serving, and testing, our work as 'application xhtml+xml' and make it work in all browsers that understand that MIME type. Once that's working perfectly well, we can change MIME type to 'text/html' and give IE/win (and the rendering in other browsers) some attention. Doing it in this order is a quick way to create pretty future-proof web solutions, and we don't even need to check the validity of our source code all that much, since the good browsers will immediately inform us about any flaws -- there's no "error recovery" for properly served xhtml. I find this procedure to be a time-saver, as it reduces the amount of testing and use of on-line and off-line test-tools and validators. IMPORTANT: NOTE that our CSS (and javascript) may not work as intended for properly served xhtml. A few details are handled differently, so a bit of MIME type switching and testing is required if one wants to use xhtml 1.0 -- regardless of how the final version is served. If one can't, or won't, do the necessary MIME type testing, then it's better to stick to HTML 4.01 where we only have to deal with 'text/html' anyway -- for ever. regards Georg (still on vacation :-) ) ______________________________________________________________________ css-discuss [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d IE7 information -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=IE7 List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
